Box set

Box set, in Western theatre, realistically detailed, three-walled, roofed setting that simulates a room with the fourth wall (the one closest to the audience) removed. Authentic details include doors with three-dimensional moldings, windows backed with outdoor scenery, stairways, and, at times, painted highlights and shadows.

Box set for a scene from Ours by Thomas William Robertson, performed at the Prince of Wales …

Courtesy of the Illustrated London News; photograph, John Freeman & Co.

The box set was introduced in 1832 in Madame Vestris’ London production of The Conquering Game by William Bayle Bernard. It gained wide usage by the end of the 19th century and is a common feature of the modern theatre.

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...at the Olympic Theatre. She controlled all the elements of a production and combined them into a single, integrated unit. She also was enamoured of spectacle and is credited with introducing the box set on the London stage in 1832, although there is some evidence pointing to its use as early as 1794. In this new set, the sidewalls of rooms were built solidly from front to back so that the...

...two decades dramatists were writing plays that relied on complex set pieces, including bridges and walls. Doors and windows were set up between the wings, marking the first development toward the box set—a set representing three walls of a room, the fourth being the plane of the proscenium.

As the demand grew for more scenic realism in Western theatre, the use of three-dimensional furnishings and box sets forced scene changes to take place behind the drop curtain between acts. For shifting heavy three-dimensional settings, a revolving stage was developed in 1896 at the Residenztheater in Munich and was soon widely adopted. Other mechanical devices for shifting three-dimensional...